1) That there has been a historical conflict between science and religion.
2) That Christians (or Moslems) burnt down the Great Library of Alexandria.
3) That the Church taught that the earth was flat.
4) That Hitler was a Christian.
5) That the inquisition was unusually brutal for its time.
6) That the victims of witch hunts/crusades ran into millions.
7) That Christianity was responsible for the Dark Ages.
8) That Eusebius was a liar.
9) That Christians have always taken the Bible literally.
10) That conversions to Christianity tended to be forced.

2: So are martians. and quite frankly, there is at least as much evidence tying it to the martians. Even the Wikipedia entry shows that Julius Ceasar is most likely to b the culprit, and he died before Christ was born.

3: According to relativity, it kinda is. Under relativity, you choose a reference point to be the stationary center object. This can be the eartn, the sun, the moon, the centre of the milky way, and all of these are equallt valid.

4: So if a serial killer calls himself an athiest, does tat make all athiests bad? Can we please avoid using worse argumentation methods than the fundies? Thankyou.

5: But it does invalidate the word 'unusually' if it is the norm at that place nd time, then it i in no way unusual. Also, to suggest that it is unusual to the aggregate of human history desplays a complete ignorance of human behaviour over the last 5000 years.

6: tens of thousands at the low guesses, and hundreds of thousands at the high guesses. not quite millions. Also most of those were during the bubonic plague period. So abotu as expected as the American reaction to muslims during october 2001

7: Source, citation, and evidence. Please use a scientific approach to this. I would like an analysis on the overall effect of the hoarding of knowledge, in if/how it extended the dark ages, vs how much it accelerated the renaissance

8: Ok he was a liar, pick me a living person who does not lie. otoh granted this one is not a myth. We have one out of 10 so far :) (Gods above and below, the "fundie" is smarter than the commentator, is this a first?)

9: So you know that statement to be a myth, and say that you do not buy into it, good for you. Now given your reaction to #4, you are now required to accept all athiests who believe this as your peers.

10: once again, citation and source. I want reliable historical sources here. Much of history speaks of major conversins through eloquence. SO while some forced are acknowledged (St George for example) I want evidence before accepting that the majority are guilty there.

1) In modern times there has been a conflict
2) The Christians did burn it down because they thought it was a Pagan temple. Muslims actually saved some of the books
3) No; it taught Earth was the center of the universe
4) Gott Mit Uns, God With Us, the words on every nazi belt buckle
5) It was unusually brutal and claiming it was normal "for its time" is no excuse
6) The victims of the crusades ran into over a million non-combatants and there were tens of thousands of witch-hunt victims
7) It was
8) I don't have information on that
9) No one makes this claim
10) No one makes this claim

1.) Okay, look at the venom Evolution is being attacked. And the dinosaur fossils. The persecution many scientific minds faced if they brought anything to light that conflicted with the church.
2.) As I recall, they did, and sticking your fingers in your ears and saying the bad people weren't ours doesn't make it go away.
3.) They did, and also taught that the Earth was the literal center of the universe. As I recall, Galileo made claims to the contrary and was silenced by the church.
4.) Gott mit uns means what, my friend?
5.) It was unusually brutal for ANY time!
6.) Don't have information to say that this is incorrect. However, the Witch Hunts DID represent a stunning failure of due process. At least in Salem, if a person was accused of witchcraft, they were dead. Be it by a "test," or by execution, they were dead.
7.) THEY WERE! When you suppress any science to ensure people's wallets...erm, I mean souls remain close to God, you staunch and stagnate intellectual progress. Thus, Dark Ages.
8.) No knowledge on this, thus no comment.
9.) Oh please. The only parts you guys take literally is the hate gays part and Genesis. The moment it inconveniences you, though, it's allegory. I mean, if you took it literally, you wouldn't have a computer to write on, now would you?
10.) Turn or burn? Conversion by sword point? Admittedly, now it's more just underhanded, preying on the weak, and the traumatized, but even then...not to mention, you'd do well to look through some of the comments on here. There are a few Torquemada wannabes on here.

1. Far from always: While religion and science have a habit of coexisting uneasily, they are not automatically at odds.

2. Julius Caesar burned down the Great Library in 48BC. Where do the Christians (or Muslims) come into this? The Christians burned down the Serapeum of Alexandria (which had served as the annex of the Library and a storage site) for being a pagan temple - which it was. The Muslim Caliph Omar, upon the conquest of Egypt from the Christian Byzantines, was alleged to have said that all the books were either heresy or superfluous, and should be burned either way. However, this is far from verified.

3. Citation, please. I'm not at all sure that it did historically teach this.

4. So what? Argumentum ad Hitlerum is one of the nastier logical fallacies out there.

5. Actually, no it wasn't. It was brutal, but no more than (for example) the Mongol conquest of Samarqand in 1220AD, in which Genghis Khan reputedly ordered the slaughter of the entire population, down to the last domestic pet.

6. Tens of thousands - certainly. Hundreds of thousands - almost certainly. My personal guess is about 1 million at best. In order to get to millionS, you will need to include Islamic and other faiths' religiously-motivated wars.

7. O RLY? I have a lot of problems with Christianity, but the only way to tie them to the Dark Ages is to link them to the fall of the Roman Empire, which ushered in the Dark Ages. A term which is starting to fall into disrepute among historians, anyway, due to evidence suggesting that the problems were far from universal, even in Western Europe.

8. Who? And irrelevant, in any case.

9. Always? Most certainly not. The Second Vatican Council formally abolished this in the Catholic Church (the largest Christian sub-church), a point which many Protestant chruches has reached decades or centuries earlier.

10. a) To the original poster: Not a belief subscribed to by most atheists I know.

b) To szena: Actually, not. There was a wide incidence of it, but "most" conversions historically forced is a very large claim. And one unsubstantiated by the evidence I have access to.

1) There is, though science as we know it emerged rather recently; as long as science has really been around, though, it's been at odds with religion.
2) They likely did.
3) They did.
4) He was.
5) It was.
6) It did, if you add both witch hunts and crusades together.
7) It was.
8) He was.
9) They haven't; we aren't pushing that one. We've read it ourselves, and know that if you were REALLY taking it literally, you'd be acting quite differently. However, we have noticed that the craziest Christian fucktards of each era claim to be taking the Bible literally.
10) They do.

1) Quite right, there has not always been a conflict between science and religion throughout history. The conflict has occurred when scientists have shown that religious dogma is not the best way of explaining reality. When that occurs, it is the religious leaders who have instigated conflict to protect their positions. Nothing makes religious leaders feel threatened like reality.

2) Christians have attempted to silence dissenting voices since the days of Constantine. Even today the ranks of book-burners, self-appointed cultural censors and anti-evolution propagandists in the USA are overwhelmingly populated by Christian fanatics. It is odd that a faith that claims to have unique access to "truth" would have to silence dissenting ideas to protect itself.

4) Did Hitler "say the magic words" which would have turned him into a good fundamentalist Christian? We will probably never know. Did he make use of Christian slogans, ideals and scripture to inspire his fanatical legions? Absolutely! Care to explain how a supposedly perfect religion grounded in love and forgiveness could be used as a tool to promote mass murder?

5) Well, at least you didn't try to invoke the old, "the inquisitors weren't real Christians" excuse. Now, would you care to explain how a supposedly perfect religion based on love and forgiveness has any excuse promoting fear and torture? Aren't Christians supposed to have a higher moral standard than other folks (that is what they claim after all)?

6) Trying to minimize the number of victims of Christian brutality does not help your side at all. Why was a supposedly perfect religion based on love and forgiveness promoting witch hunts and crusades at all? Could it be that Christians are as susceptible to irrational fear and greed as the rest of us? If so, then their claims of moral superiority are groundless.

9) Quite the contrary, most atheists realize that the biblical literalists' claims of being, "that ol' time religion" are patently absurd. It is the fundamentalists who are the avid promoters of this particular myth.

10) Again, ever since the days of Constantine, powerful Christians have displayed few, if any, qualms about using force to promote their religion. That spirit lives today, demonstrated by fundamentalists who have tired to promote mandatory school prayer and shoe-horning creationism into science classes. I ask again, why does a religion supposedly founded in "Truth" need to resort to political and military power to promote itself at all?

Once power was removed from Church/ Christianity Europe saw a progression towards freer, more productive societies. This can be tracked as pockets developed and spread as kingdoms took the churchs power away.

It's historical fact that the dreaded royalty and noblemen/barons/lords rebeled against the churchs power and step by step opened up democracy.

The churchs don't only promote total submissivness, they fuckin' demand it.

1. So, why the big fight with science?
2. Their both suspects.
3. Well, the bible sure does. Revelation 7:1
1 And after these things I saw four angels standing on FOUR CORNERS OF THE EARTH, holding the four winds of the earth, that the wind should not blow on the earth, nor on the sea, nor on any tree. (KJV)
4. "As a Christian I have no duty to allow myself to be
cheated, but I have the duty to be a fighter for truth and
justice..."-Adolph Hitler, in a speech delivered April 12, 1922
5. Because church and state had not been kept separate, the church powers could call upon the government to use its power against the convicted heretics. Anyone who fell back into heresy after repentance was turned over by the Inquisition to the regular government to be put to death. Most of those condemned to death were burned at the stake, but some were beaten to death or drowned.

The Inquisition was called the sanctum officium (Holy Office) because the church considered its work so praiseworthy.F

Even after the death of a victim, his punishment was not ended. The property of condemned heretics was confiscated, leaving his family in poverty.

http://mtc.org/inquis.html

6. I don't recall of anyone saying that.
7. Anyone who knows basic history knows that they are largely responsable for it.
8. Was this the guy that wanted to change re-write to suit his own needs?
9. Some don't, but many do.
10. Depends on the conversion. Their are men and women who convert on their own free will. But throught history, Chirstians have forced people to convert. Ask the indians.
11.

From a scientists perspective, that's all true.
Excluding Hitler; he was a "Christian" theosophist who skewed his theosophist beliefs to the point it started to resemble a Jackson Pollock painting. He's right on that, and number 6.
The witch hunts number range from 10 thousand to 16. No one really knows.

1) You only have to spend a bit of time on this forum to know it's true, even in the 21st century. Creationism v Evolution, anyone?
2) Good chance, but we cannot know for sure as far as I'm aware.
3) Probably. It got just about everything else wrong, so it doesn't make much difference.
4) He was. Get used to it.
5) It was. Even for its time.
6) Perhaps not millions, I wouldn't know, but there was no shortage of victims.
7) To a very large extent, it was, and through some highly draconian measures. See 5).
8) I have no idea.
9) Not all Christians, but there are still many that do - selectively. Especially the opening salvo of how god created everything in six days.
10) They have often been, historically. You know, missionaries converting the savage natives and all that crap. "Tended to be forced" is a loose term, though, and is hard to quantify.

1)Galileo, alchemists (modern science is sort of like a cleaned up version of it. With less drinking poisonous liquids hoping for eternal life, and less blowing yourself up hoping to make gold out of lead. The intrument however were and still are remarkably similar in chemistry).
2)Since you specify it as "the Great Libarary", you must mean the one that was burned in 48 B.C, some 48 years before christianity and some ~660 years before Islam were ever even thought about.
3)The bible says that Earth is the center of the world and that it's flat, so that was Catholic churches stance on the matter. However, I'm not certain did they activly "teach" it, at the time the bible was condired as universaly true book on everything along with the already ancient superstition, so there may not have been a reason for teatching, until Copernicus and Galileo, anyway.
4)He was. Catholic? Maybe, maybe not, but he certainly used it to his advantage. Gott mit uns....
5)They were unusually brutal because they were not done for any other reason then faith. Also the killing methods were quite...extreme.
6)Maybe not millions, but certainly close to a million, considering how long the crusades and hunts lasted. And I'll give you a plus for admitting that the were victims.
7)"Responsible", as in that it was the churches falut it happened, or that it lasted as long as it did? The latter would be correct.
8)Euse-who?
9)Not always, but especially in the afore mentioned Dark Ages literal interpetations of the bible were like a fashion mania, lasting to Mddle ages and up until Reneisance.
10.Some were (crusades against Poland and the Baltic countries, conquistadors), some were not (the pagan tribes of Europe mostly converted on their own as their leaders did so).

> That there has been a historical conflict between science and religion.
The religious right does indeed attempt to suppress scientific advancements. See also stem cell research and anything related to biology.

> That Christians (or Moslems) burnt down the Great Library of Alexandria.
Well, someone did it, that's for sure. And one of the possible perpetrators was the pope himself.

> That the Church taught that the earth was flat.
Not really. Everyone who studies history knows that the Greeks discovered the earth was round thousands of years ago.

Oddly enough, it’s usually Christians claiming that Columbus discovered that the earth was round because he read his Bible. (Which is weird because the Bible says the earth is flat, not round. But whatever, it’s not like the Catholics took everything in the Bible literally, anyways.)

> That Hitler was a Christian.
“I believe today that I am acting in the sense of the Almighty Creator. By warding off the Jews I am fighting for the Lord's work.” —Adolph Hitler, Speech, Reichstag, 1936

“I have followed the Church in giving our party program the character of unalterable finality, like the Creed. The Church has never allowed the Creed to be interfered with. It is fifteen hundred years since it was formulated, but every suggestion for its amendment, every logical criticism, or attack on it, has been rejected. The Church has realized that anything and everything can be built up on a document of that sort, no matter how contradictory or irreconcilable with it. The faithful will swallow it whole, so long as logical reasoning is never allowed to be brought to bear on it.” —Adolf Hitler, from Rauschning, The Voice of Destruction, pp. 239-40

“My feelings as a Christian points me to my Lord and Savior as a fighter. It points me to the man who once in loneliness, surrounded by a few followers, recognized these Jews for what they were and summoned men to fight against them and who, God's truth! was greatest not as a sufferer but as a fighter. In boundless love as a Christian and as a man I read through the passage which tells us how the Lord at last rose in His might and seized the scourge to drive out of the Temple the brood of vipers and adders. How terrific was his fight against the Jewish poison. Today, after two thousand years, with deepest emotion I recognize more profoundly than ever before the fact that it was for this that He had to shed his blood upon the Cross. As a Christian I have no duty to allow myself to be cheated, but I have the duty to be a fighter for truth and justice... And if there is anything which could demonstrate that we are acting rightly, it is the distress that daily grows. For as a Christian I have also a duty to my own people. And when I look on my people I see them work and work and toil and labor, and at the end of the week they have only for their wages wretchedness and misery. When I go out in the morning and see these men standing in their queues and look into their pinched faces, then I believe I would be no Christian, but a very devil, if I felt no pity for them, if I did not, as did our Lord two thousand years ago, turn against those by whom today this poor people are plundered and exposed.” —Adolf Hitler, speech in Munich on April 12, 1922, countering a political opponent, Count Lerchenfeld, who opposed antisemitism on his personal Christian feelings. Published in "My New Order", quoted in Freethought Today April 1990

I'm years late to the party here but I'd like to point out that technically the "Great Library of Alexandria" was destroyed several different times, the following are a few of the times:

1) The Julius Cesar burned it down while destroying his own ships during a civil war.

2)Emperor Aurelian took Alexandria and in the process most of the libraries contents were lost.

3) In AD 391 the Christians outlawed Paganism and destroyed the temple that contained the remainder of the library

and finally, although this is just historical speculation 4) Caliph Omar ordered the books that were rescued from the previous destruction of the temple 300 years prior to be burned, thus snuffing out the great library for good.